Hangzhou Citizens Participation In Public Decision-making Research

Public participation is an important guarantee to promote scientific anddemocratic public decision-making, is an integral and important part of the country’spolitical democracy and political civilization. With the rise and gradually form of civilsociety in China, more and more citizens begin to enter the public domain, andparticipation in public governance and public decision-making. Government branchesand public managers must attach great importance to and actively cope with theproblems of citizen participation in public decision-making, they should guide thecitizens to participation in public policy formulation and implementation reasonablyand orderly, and consult with those citizens on an equal footing, friendly andcooperative attitude.Combined with the open decision-making practice in Hangzhou and the scientificuse of relevant theory of citizen participation, this paper finishes an empirical researchand the pros and cons analysis on the collecting of people’s proposals, the opendecision-making of government executive meeting, the democratic participation of thepeople’s livelihood issues as well as the multi-linkage of the media platform, etc, allof which are the various working model of citizen participation in publicdecision-making. At the same time, this paper summarizes the main features andshortcomings of citizen participation in public decision-making in Hangzhou, andproposes suggestions to improve citizen participation in public decision-making inHangzhou based on two aspects, the enhance of government decision-making capacityand the building of citizen participation ability.Citizen participation in public decision-making in China as a whole is still in itsinfancy. With the expansion of the public service concept and the enhanced civicawareness of public participation, citizen participation is bound to spark in China anddevelop comprehensively and rapidly.